I took my boys to the Fathers and Sons campout held by the Stake that my sons attend with my ex.

After the sun went down, everyone gathered in the hall of the main cabin for some kind of faith-promoting priesthood presentation (you can't just go camping for fun, you have to have a priesthood purpose, I guess). I stayed in my tent, but thanks to the wonderful sound system in the cabin I was able to hear most of what the speaker was saying.

The entire focus of his spiel was the usual tripe about what a great guy Joseph Smith was, and then he gave a very emotional (and innacurate) account of the Smith Brothers' martyrdom. The kicker was that they had some replicas of Joseph's and Hyrum's death masks on display, and the attendees were invited to come up and view the death masks afterwards, and even touch them, I suppose.

I sure hope no one brought any investigators who they were trying to convince that the Mormons don't worship Joseph Smith, because it sure sounded like worship to me.

Has anyone else ever experienced this kind of veneration of the relics of the prophet kind of thing?

Also, why do Mormons feel like they have to ruin every fun outing with some kind of preachy sermon? That really bothered me when I was a member.

The whole purpose of the Father-Son campout, which takes place in May of every year, is to honor the restoration of the Aaronic Priesthood which took place at about the same time. So there is always a spiel on that. The last FS-campout I went to, I was conveniently setting up the tent and inflating the air mattress during the program, and showed up to listen just as it was ending.
You are right, though. There always has to be a spirichul thought at every event, no matter how secular the event itself is.

I think its funny that everyone knows the date, time, place, and who was present for the Aaronic priesthood, but the restoration of the Melcheesy-dick Priesthood is a big black hole of no information at all. That's another topic for another time...

I went as a kid in the late 70's. Back then all we did was camp and have fun. I do remember the time that I went when I was probably 12-13 and a couple of priests came where everyone (all the fathers too) were sitting by a fire and dropped their pants and gave everyone a BA.

I went to one recently and the camp fire devotional was on just that. By that time my testimony was toast so I had one foot in and one foot out. It was funny, when questions were asked about sequence of events with priesthood restoration and dates and who visited who, I was the only one who could answer, so i did answer the questions very uncomfortably but I knew everything because I had been doing intense research on the subject which was exactly why I stopped believing it all together.

I boycotted every father and son priesthood camp throughout my son's entire youth. Sorry, but I don't camp for God, Church or anybody.

The bishop tried every manipulation to get me to camp because my son's salvation was definitely at stake. My son would be "missing out." The problem was that my son was so detested by other boys in the ward (and their parents?) that none of them would have anything to do with him. I have come to believe that I was doing him a favour by missing father and son camps.

I did other activities with my son - just not want the Church mandated. We cooked the family dinner together every Saturday night, for instance.

The problem with Mormonism is that it tries to define "love" without taking individual expression into account.